TUZENBACH. [Smiling] When you come home from your work you seem so young, and so unfortunate.... [Pause.] IRINA. I am tired. No, I don’t like the telegraph office, I don’t like it. MASHA. You’ve grown thinner.... [Whistles a little] And you look younger, and your face has become like a boy’s. TUZENBACH. That’s the way she does her hair. IRINA. I must find another job, this one won’t do for me. What I wanted, what I hoped to get, just that is lacking here. Labour without poetry, without ideas.... [A knock on the floor] The doctor is knocking. [To TUZENBACH] Will you knock, dear. I can’t... I’m tired.... [TUZENBACH knocks] He’ll come in a minute. Something ought to be done. Yesterday the doctor and Andrey played cards at the club and lost money. Andrey seems to have lost 200 roubles. MASHA. [With indifference] What can we do now? IRINA. He lost money a fortnight ago, he lost money in December. Perhaps if he lost everything we should go away from this town. Oh, my God, I dream of Moscow every night. I’m just like a lunatic. [Laughs] We go there in June, and before June there’s still... February, March, April, May... nearly half a year! MASHA. Only Natasha mustn’t get to know of these losses. IRINA. I expect it will be all the same to her. [CHEBUTIKIN, who has only just got out of bed--he was resting after dinner--comes into the dining-room and combs his beard. He then sits by the table and takes a newspaper from his pocket.] MASHA. Here he is.... Has he paid his rent? IRINA. [Laughs] No. He’s been here eight months and hasn’t paid a copeck. Seems to have forgotten. MASHA. [Laughs] What dignity in his pose! [They all laugh. A pause.] IRINA. Why are you so silent, Alexander Ignateyevitch? VERSHININ. I don’t know. I want some tea. Half my life for a tumbler of tea: I haven’t had anything since morning. CHEBUTIKIN. Irina Sergeyevna! IRINA. What is it? CHEBUTIKIN. Please come here, Venez ici. [IRINA goes and sits by the table] I can’t do without you. [IRINA begins to play patience.] VERSHININ. Well, if we can’t have any tea, let’s philosophize, at any rate. TUZENBACH. Yes, let’s. About what? VERSHININ. About what? Let us meditate... about life as it will be after our time; for example, in two or three hundred years. TUZENBACH. Well? After our time people will fly about in balloons, the cut of one’s coat will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and develop it, but life will remain the same, laborious, mysterious, and happy. And in a thousand years’ time, people will still be sighing: “Life is hard!”--and at the same time they’ll be just as afraid of death, and unwilling to meet it, as we are.